Music, AKA: What started as a Short Comment Grew into Its Own Entry

I've never been a fan of instrumental music. I think I have had two CDs I liked that were purely instrumental- Handel's Water Suites and Jiang Xiao Qing's Breathing Spaces Don't ask me why those two. Which reminds me, I need a new copy of the Water Suites as someone borrowed my CDs and never gave them back. Anyhow, today, listening to the instrumental part of a very touching song in church, I was struck by the thought that musical instruments are the wordless voices expressing what we cannot use words to say. Seems simplistic to those more in tune with music I am sure. But my bailiwick is words. When I think, I think in words (I have talked to people who think in 'concepts' or 'images'). Even my mental images are accompanied by a running commentary. Words swirl around me like the air I breath in and out, so just realizing that they don't always have a place, that things can be beautiful without words was an interesting insight.

It made me think about how yesterday P. asked me why women tend to put such meaning to songs. Well, he did once too, I could tell you the love songs he used to croon to me and whisper in my ear. Even now, he says we will reclaim "Save the Best for Last" our song that has been ignored for so long. But other than that, he wondered, why are songs so important when a woman refers to them about feelings? Well, to me the obvious answers was they are poems set to music. But in my mind while the poems had the meaning, the music didn't. Now I know, the music is what we feel but cannot put to words. It has it's place, enriching the experience and perception and adding those subtle nuances of feeling, of your body moving to the call that words can't always do. It's almost like music is a translator of feelings for the body to react and words translate feelings for the mind.

I'm not saying that I'm going to suddenly appreciate all the music I wrote off in the past because it was weak without words. But I think I will be open to a new appreciation when I hear instrumental music that was never there for me before. Feelings written in a different language. I can get that. I can feel that.